This IDC study (a translation of the Japanese report IDC #J12020101) analyzes the Japan telecommunications services trends in 2011 and presents a forecast for the 2012–2016 market. The market is analyzed based on information gathered from interviews with carriers, corporate financial reports, official statistics, and IDC studies.

"Some significant trends of the telecommunications services market in 2011 included the horizontal growth in the consumer market as a result of the FTTH segment compensating for the decline in the voice segment, continuing slight decline in the business market as FTTH was unable to cover for the decline in the voice segment due to few implementation and decreased ARPU for wide area Ethernet. Considering that FTTH and 0AB-J IP telephone will completely replace the voice market and that network will become more important than ever in a cloud era, carriers should strive to improve the reliability of these services and release evaluation standards and assessment indicators that can provide an objective judgment of the level of reliability," says Yoko Ono, senior market analyst, Communications, IDC Japan.